What would a garden be like if humans did not actively take care of it? A secret garden!
The garden is by definition a place where the natural environment is dimensioned and designed to follow human logic, allowing on the one hand a contact between humans and non-humans, and on the other hand subjecting the latter to the will of the former.
The “secret garden” thus reverses this relationship, giving a dimension of its own to the natural environment that can thus develop spontaneously according to its own needs, its own timing and creating its own aesthetics. A new ecology of possibility where humans are transformed into spectators of natural processes. The “secret garden” plays with the separation and distance of the humans from the natural, which are necessary to allow a spontaneous development of nature (Clément, 2004). A wall protects this small non-human garden from human influence, which can only limit itself to observing this new landscape from the top of a ladder.
A new (or perhaps ancient) form of coexistence is thus experienced where human habitation does not stifle other forms of life or other lifestyles, making room for a freer and more independent development, while at the same time creating meeting points (Latour, 2018).